Coping with cabin fever

 

Looking out the window, I gaze at a world of white. Snow clings to every branch and leaf in the back yard. I lean against the glass and shiver from the cold seeping in.

A cardinal pecks at the birdfeeder, a bright red spot in the snow. His mate joins him; the orange beak her only adornment against muted brown feathers. 

"Living in the country in winter is not easy," said nature writer Gladys Taber from the perch of her seventeenth-century farmhouse in Connecticut. "It is not simply sitting by a log fire and reading that good book. It is no life for lazy people. One morning always comes when you are snowed in, no matter whether you planned to go out or not. You can't even open the front door."

Past winters have been warmer, which was attributed to global warming; but this year has been cold, windy, snowy and stormy. As lovely as fresh fallen snow can be, confinement sets in as day after day dawns dark and dismal.

"Most of us, I thought, are caged in some way all our lives," said Taber. "There are walls and bars and fences of all kinds, invisible but tangible. We spend a great deal of time climbing over obstacles --perhaps this is what life is all about. But we must all, I think, long for a brief time of real freedom outside the restrictions of our existence."

Hidden beneath hundred-foot pines, our barn is camouflaged in the snow. The Amish hex sign at the peak draws the eye to the heavens. The well-worn path is obscured. Cabin fever sets in.

"The ancient house speaks to us," Taber said. "Footfalls sound on  the steep stairs, doors open softly, floorboards creak, echoing lives lived here long, long ago. And I think echoes of the lives of our family will be here too."

Seeking spaces

Last weekend and for the third time this season, the water pump failed at our summer house by the sea.

Consequently, when something goes wrong, we take an alternate path to a nearby inlet of the Taunton River.

Seeking space in our crowded lives, we withdraw...

We know the way by heart. The path is well worn and the sounds as familiar as our own heartbeat.

Shells mark the route to the shore.

A sea gull stands on a stone in the channel.

Why not while away an hour in God's handiwork?

An ideal spot for a picnic.

Walk with me by the sea

Colorful wildflowers lead the way to the seashore.

 

Gray clouds collide with blue skies in the Heavens.

Boulders point the way to Europe.

Follow the unbeaten path until the tide changes.

Get ready to jump. The waves are rolling in.

A wildflower thrives in a bed of rounded rocks.

Clouds

Lord Byron wrote: "Be thou the rainbow in the storms of life. The evening beam that smiles the clouds away, and tints tomorrow with prophetic ray."

Driving through overhanging clouds, we could almost touch them. Great big blobs of gray swirled around us blocking the sun.

Since we knew that they were the stuff of wildfires heralding from Canada, we cranked up the air conditioner and lamented the loss of clean air and countless forests.

Turning down Pond Bridge Road, we noticed holes in the fabric. Bright blue smudges began peeking out of the clouds.

By the time we passed acres of potato plants in the gardens at Ferolbink Farms and coasted down the boat ramp within a few feet of the Sakonnet River, the sun had banished the smoke and reclaimed the sky.

Needless to say, so far it has been a most unusual summer.

In addition to darkened skies, it has been incredibly and unseasonably hot.

New England weather is known by its variability, and we natives are accustomed to the constant up-and-down trajectory of the thermometer. This brings about days of hot and cold and some in between.

But this summer we are stuck in Saharan-like climes and long bouts of thunder and lightning. In fact, a dark cloud covered the annual Fourth of July parade in my small town. Consequently, the townspeople thought they could wait out the torrential rains and winds with their skimpy umbrellas. Not a chance. 

As far back as we can remember, the clan has always gathered at the summer house on Independence Day. But this year the tradition was broken due to a storm threat issued by the meteorologists. Instead, we descended on my mother's house and cooked hamburgers and hot dogs on an old charcoal grill and ate in the garage. 

Of course, the clouds cleared for a little while; but we left early in the pouring rain. No volleyball this year.

Last week my brother and nephew attacked the invasive thorny weeds that had wrapped themselves around the summer house, the wooden shed, and the well house, a force to be reckoned with.

Every summer the Creator sends us deep purple morning glories which climb up the porch and big, blue, beautiful hydrangeas that welcome guests at the front of the house. 

Now there is much more work to do. Without constant vigilance, the invasive weeds and their nasty thorns will vanquish these seasonal flowers.

Unfortunately, they seem to really enjoy cloudy days.                            . 

The season of our discontent

Whipped by wind, water and sand, I stumble along the seashore for the first time in this new season. I shiver in the cold, but persistence carries me forward.

Just as the pandemic kept me locked inside for far too long, I am determined to break free from the confines of time and space of these past few years. 

Splattered yet defiant, I trip over rocks and sink into wet sand as I long for escape.

Overhead, sea gulls circle and cry. The angry sea crashes and curses at my feet. Where have you been all this time?

Well, it sounded like a good idea . . .

Instead of winterizing the summer house from November to May, why not keep it open all year long, as a hideaway from whatever life, climate and circumstance hurled at us?

Fill the oil tank, crank up the heat, stock up the old refrigerator, keep the mice at bay and head to the summer house whenever we wanted. Holed away inside its cozy confines, I could write unimpeded, at a whim, or just read to my heart's content.

In the late fall, Fogland beckoned: my favorite chair, overflowing bookshelves, Mom's warm afghan, a hot cup of tea, and a vacation whenever I wanted.

Then the unthinkable happened:

Mice moved in for their long winter vacation, leaving mementos in all the drawers; the inclement weather triggered my asthma; the freezer iced up and locked us out; the stairs made a slippery slope coated with ice; the frosty air seeped through the huge and heavy air conditioner; the oil tank needed constant refilling; the cooking stove emitted little heat; the water pump stopped pumping; the overworked plumber promised a long wait; the winds lashed the house with a vengeance pushing two windows inside on the floor; and the oil burner seized and there was no heat . . . 

So now the new season begins anew. There will be a long list of things to do. I sit on a big boulder at the beach and wait for the kids to catch up. I listen to their laughter and screams as they run and play.

All's right with the world.

Only the sea remains

Sea gulls gather along the icy Sakonnet River.

"The prospect of spending future summers by the sea ... is very delightful," wrote Jane Austen.

But alas, it is springtime; and the temperature in New England keeps plummeting.

Brrrr....

Leaving home, we drive to the summer house. The world around us is frozen in place. Steam rises from the Sakonnet, where the warmth is trapped beneath the waves. We climb High Hill Road, and the wind whips the windshield with airborne sand.

Taking the scenic route high above the massive stones by the water's edge, we slowly meander through the three tiny streets. Our yard is cluttered with discarded maple branches hiding under the waving boughs. Windswept grasses are an unappealing brown, clutching onto the soil.

Our boat, a Sea Pro Center Console, waits behind the house for its first outing. Plastic chairs tumble in the wind.

Suddenly, my husband hits the brakes, flings open the door and runs toward the stairs. The window in the small bedroom is missing, and the curtains billow. Finding the window on the floor unbroken, he replaces the glass in the track.

I hurry inside and immediately feel the intense cold. The oil burner refuses to roar into life, and the radiators no longer hiss and sputter.

The oil in the tank was used up, as the warm air rushed out the open window.

I call Quik Oil, LLC and order a hundred gallons of liquid gold.

Then I settle into my favorite chair, wrap myself in a blanket and grab a book off the shelf, while my husband grabs a beer, mutters under his breath and storms out the door.

 

Julie Klassen writes in "The Sisters of Seaview": "When evening falls, ... the beach empties, the fishermen return to their cottages, the tourists to their hotels, and refreshment sellers to their shops, like birds to their nesting places. Then only the sea remains, tides rising and falling but always there, as constant as their Creator."

Sunshine is delicious

“Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating; there is really no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather,” wrote English writer and philosopher John Ruskin.

On this unseasonably cold day, it is a different kind of good weather at the summer house, and I wonder where the warmth went.

All summer the sun was a torch, singeing these three tiny streets by the sea in our little corner of New England. Yet what seems like a blink of an eye, October brought her pounding rains and plummeting temperatures, drawing us inside while lamenting season’s end.

But Ruskin is right. Fogland beckons no matter the weather; and with this kind of thinking, it is always a fun day at the beach.

Gathering inside the summer house offers new perspective. After cranking up the thermostat, I sit by the window, taking in the view from the inside out.

Quintessentially New England, the foliage is tinted in shades of reds, yellows, browns and greens, as the leaves levitate in the brisk breeze.

Despite the windows being closed, one can still hear the soughing of the sea, which is the rhythm of life in these parts.

In a space like this, quiet permeates everything; and the senses discern the tinniest sounds from a gull’s distant cry to the buzz of a bee.

The violet morning glories cling perilously to the porch, wrapping around the railings, holding on for dear life.

I hear the sound of a hammer reverberating, as a workman dangles from staging on the peak of a three-story house, replacing shingles from a recent storm.

But most of my neighbors are tucked inside. I see no cars passing by, although I spot a woman walking her little white dog as she braves the constant wind.

Then a violent sound eclipses the solitude. My husband starts the lawn mower, which blocks out everything. The noise is deafening, but the intrusion is necessary. After the rains this past week, the lawn mushroomed.

Getting up, I grab the afghan my mother made from the back of the couch and wrap myself in its comforting warmth.

Reaching up, I slide a book off the shelf.

Another fun day at the beach…

Summer by the Sea

A midsummer morning, I search the summerhouse bookshelves for the short novel "The Country of the Pointed Firs" by Sarah Orne Jewett. She tells the story of a lone female visitor who arrives at the small coastal town called Dunnet Landing in nineteenth-century Maine, where she finds lodging with the widowed Mrs. Todd, a herbalist. One hundred and forty pages later, we never learn the lady's name. The opening paragraphs of the book capture the joy of anticipation we feel as we begin a summer vacation in a fetching spot. "There was something about the coast town ... which made it seem more attractive than other maritime villages ... Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to the rocky shore and dark woods, and the few houses which seemed to be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges... When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person. The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair." We imagine the view, the perfect place to think, write, paint or simply do nothing at all... "On the brink of the hill stood a little white schoolhouse, much wind-blown and weather-beaten, which was a landmark to seagoing folk; from its door there was a most beautiful view of sea and shore. The summer vacation now prevailed, and after finding the door unfastened, and taking a long look through one of the seaward windows, and reflecting afterward for some time in a shady place among the bayberry bushes, ... I hired the schoolhouse for the rest of the vacation for fifty cents a week." Hear the shutters wobbling back and forth that mimic the wind and waves. Sit at the teacher's desk and see the sheep wander out of a fairytale. "Selfish as it may appear, the retired situation seemed to possess great advantages, and I spent days there quite undisturbed with the sea-breeze blowing through the small high windows and swaying the heavy outside shutters to and fro. I hung my hat and luncheon-basket on an entry nail as if I were a small scholar, but I sat at the teacher's desk as if I was that great authority, with all the timid empty benches in rows before me. Now and then an idle sheep came and stood for a long time looking at the door." Gather with family and friends at the annual reunion. Have a summertime feast, swim, share memories, laugh... "Twas pretty when they sang the hymn, wasn't it?" asked Mrs. Blackett at suppertime, with real enthusiasm... I saw that Mrs. Todd's broad shoulders began to shake. "There was good singers there; yes there was excellent singers," she agreed heartily, putting down her teacup, "but I chanced to drift alongside Mis' Peter Bowden o' Great Bay, an' I couldn't help thinkin' if she was as far out o'town as she was out o'tune, she wouldn't get back in a day." Spend a few hours with a good book by the sea, and embark on a summer odyssey.

A time for every season

  

 

 We are back but irrevocably changed.

"Shaken off our social foundations by a global calamity, an invisible virus we could not see coming, we each found ourselves at the end of certainty and the beginning of faith," writes Joan Chittister in The Monastic Heart. "But where can we start to become what we know, down deep, ourselves to be -- spiritual seekers in search of a way through a serious period, an astounding eruption of normalcy in our lives?"

Climbing the well-worn stairs of the front porch to the accompaniment of birdsong, I insert the key into the lock of the old wooden door, and enter into a new season, unlike any other. Overhead, seagulls circle, and the red maple is about to explode into leaf.

The summer house is asleep, but now it yawns and stirs. It's time to throw open the windows and clear the cobwebs. Listen and you can hear the siren's call, the ancient song of the sea, waves crashing in cadence to the Master's beat.

This is the place where the stuff of childhood and contemporary life intersect. It is forever springtime in childish musings, yet altered by the last two winters of our discontent. 

There is much work to do. Sprinkled like flour, a thin layer of dust blankets every surface. Pushing up the old windows and sliding them into worn slots takes a great show of strength. The freezer door is stuck and needs defrosting. A kitchen towel drawer is dotted with mouse droppings. As the well begins to pump, water circulates like blood through veins. Opening the kitchen faucet, brownish water pulses for five minutes straight, before it clears.

Lying dormant, the summer house has waited patiently for the sound of children playing, the whirr of the lawnmower, the hum of the refrigerator, the play by play of a Red Sox game, and most of all, the gathering of family and friends filling every nook and cranny of the place with laughter.

But right now I alone herald this new and unknown season. I sit in my favorite chair and ponder the future while acknowledging the uncertainty of a return to life as we know it.

Ultimately, we are spiritual seekers traveling on the road of life. We lift our burdens, and despite stumbling, we amble on…

Daffodils dance in the wind along the stone wall.

Red maple buds are ready to burst into leaf.

Escape

Stuck between a rock and a hard place?  

Turn your back on these troubling times and escape.

"It is solved by walking," wrote 5th-century saint, Augustine of Hippo.

Come with me.

Let's walk along the seashore together.

Breathe in the salt air. Embrace the stillness. 

Plod on... even though we may stumble.

When the wind shifts the sea grasses, choose a new path.  

Amid the seaweed, await the crashing waves.

Look around and see how everything fits together seamlessly.

Observe the Creator's art. There is nothing better than this.

The Hiding Place

 

Sitting in my favorite chair of vintage hard-rock maple that my parents bought as newlyweds, I am in the space where I feel most safe.

During the past year I have fled to the summer house countless times to reside in this little corner of the room by the window, secure in its confines.

Whether weathering storms of winter snows and spring rains or bathed in bright sunshine, I hid and read.

As the pandemic raged, my world became smaller; but my worldview became bigger.

The library shelves behind me hold dozens of my books, and I have read them all – ranging from an illustrated hardcover of J. K. Rowling’s children’s book “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,” a special Christmas gift from my best friend, to a giant glossy picture book of Francesca Premoli-Droulers’ “Writers’ Houses”, a $50 splurge at Barnes & Noble that I bought decades ago with the generous Christmas bonus from a kind publisher.

I vacillated in the store whether to put the money toward the household budget or purchase this one-of-a-kind tome that was way beyond my means.

Today I think I made the right decision.

Sequestered, yet set free, I lived this past year in the pages of my books.

In my mind’s eye, I sat at a school desk in Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry holding a magic wand, or at Karen Blixen’s writing desk in Kenya gazing “Out of Africa.”

I delved into gardening books, planning rows of summer vegetable plants that would sustain my family despite supermarket shortages.

I travelled to the “The Country of the Pointed Firs” with Sarah Orne Jewett, and I became a writer who spends three months in a small coastal town in nineteenth-century Maine, or moved into the cabin that Henry David Thoreau built on the shore of “Walden” Pond.

But most of all, I pondered “The Divine Hours” by Phyllis Tickle, praying for an end to the plight of a people on a planet in pain.

Frozen in time

We wait... 

In the dead of winter, we are frozen in place.

Temperatures dip, and Arctic winds blow.

Snow falls sporadically, clinging to every tree branch and blade of grass.

We hibernate and pray for an early spring.

The woods beckon, a magical forest draped in winter white.

Behind a stone wall, dormant farmland stretches to the sea.

Freed from the barn, horses clad in blankets brave the cold.

The snowy path to the barn is all uphill.

Under the snow by the stone wall, daffodils bide their time.

Weathering the turn of the year

2020 has been one long dark night.

We yearn to congregate again.

We're still stuck but oh so close.

See the forest through the trees?

We're rounding the bend.

God help us trudge on.

 

A sort of fevered imagination

Blessed with an abundance of imagination by the Creator, I have put it to good use this past year.

“What sort of a fevered imagination you must have,” said Mr. Tilney to Catherine Morland in “Northanger Abbey.”

Ditto.

Thank you, Jane Austen, for describing my chief occupation these days.

Imagination is my coping mechanism when I hear the collective cry of the people on this planet.

We are our brother’s keeper; but with each passing day, we grow farther apart in survival mode.

Consequently, I create the world in my mind that I wish it could be.

While I hide behind my mask, I imagine.

Since I was a child, I have spent my summers by the sea.

However, at the end of each season, we closed up the summer house and locked the door until spring.

“Winter is coming,” my parents would say; and I would no longer hear the sigh of the sea rocking me to sleep, except in my imagination.

This fall I acutely dreaded the separation.

Working remotely at home, I had cabin fever; and our seasonal home became a safe house.

“What if we winterize the summer house and spend our weekends there?” I asked my husband and mother.

And I imagined a little Christmas tree, a manger, an angel on the front door. I would read or write with Mom’s crocheted afghan tucked around me, while the snow fell and the wind howled and the sea roared.

Dressed warmly in my wool coat, I would walk along the seashore wearing its winter face, a solitary woman immersed in the elements yet shielded from the unwelcome drone of the news of our day.

We filled the oil tank and hired a contractor who wrapped the pipes; and Saturdays and Sundays became vacation days again.

While the constant threat of the pandemic looms large in our minds, we leave our worries behind when we step inside the summer house.

Surely there can be sanctuary someplace and sometime in this world, despite Covid-19.

At least, I imagine it so. 

The tale of our 2020 kitchen garden

 

Yesterday I savored the last tomato from my kitchen garden and immediately lamented its loss. 

Sweet as sugar and dripping with juice, it was the last of its kind, lining the kitchen sill to mellow in the sun.

It had been a long road to this tomato.

Last March I first envisioned the perfect tomato.

Furloughed due to the pandemic, I sat at my desk writing a shopping list, thinking about the depleted contents of the fridge and the sparse shelves in the supermarket. And that’s when I first pictured this tomato.

I saw in my mind’s eye dozens of canning jars in my pantry, filled with the chunky red fruit.

"There is nothing that is comparable to it, as satisfactory or as thrilling, as gathering the vegetables one has grown," wrote Alice B. Toklas.

What if we could grow enough vegetables in our 16- by 8-foot kitchen garden to banish these worries?

I plotted the plot for a couple of months.

Then in May we tilled the soil.

After visiting three greenhouses with no success, we found a handful of tiny tomato, cucumber and hot pepper plants at a small farm stand.

We planted them and watered them every evening.

Back to work, but working remotely from home, I charted their sluggish progress. Slowly, the little plants began to flower.

One morning in June we gazed in horror at the garden plot or what remained of it. During the night deer had eaten all the tomato plants. Only the cucumbers and peppers survived their rampage.

We found another farm stand, offering a few tomato plants with the unusual name “Mortgage Busters.”

Not taking any chances, we fertilized and coddled the new plants that were getting a very late start on the season.

Unbelievably, they liked their new home and seemed to sprint overnight. We placed cages around them.

Then we awoke one morning, and all our work was for naught. The deer had returned for a second helping, and this time they delicately ate all the young fruit, unable to reach inside the cages.

This was the final straw. My husband hired a carpenter friend who built a fence around the kitchen garden.

Following suggestions from a friar, we began a Mary Garden within the fence, placing a small statue of the Mother and Child in front of a big beautiful bush of red roses. Herbs, including rosemary, encircled the saint.

We left the ravaged plants alone, and miraculously, they regenerated without interference. Wild birds at the feeder nearby swooped down on the plants, keeping the insects at bay. When the tiny fruit appeared, they were an unusual purple pinkish color.

Looking back, we could have bought bushels of tomatoes and paid a chef to prepare them for what it cost to fence the garden and buy all those plants.

But in the end, our 2020 kitchen garden survived on a wing and a prayer.

During these uncertain times...

Escape to an island with a moat to keep us safe.

Choose whether gray clouds hang over us or if blue skies prevail.

Stand still and accept whatever befalls us or sail away.

Let the waves of uncertainty pelt us or know this too shall pass.

Count your blessings and soar like an eagle.

The summer like no other

It is a summer like no other.

Nature is at its peak.

Day after day the sun shines with short bouts of cooling rain. 

Birds of every hue sing in the trees. 

Hydrangea blossoms burst out of cottage gardens. 

Sea and sky mirror each other, painted by the Artist's hand in brilliant shades of blue.

   

Yet a hush has fallen over this seaside village.

In summer's past, the sounds of summer by the sea reverberated throughout this jetty of three tiny streets.

Today, the sound of surf rushing over rocks is deafening because the inhabitants of this place are mute.

Tucked inside their cottages, they mostly seek sanctuary from the pestilence that has gripped even this obscure part of our world.

Down the hill at the town beach, bathers are social distancing six feet apart on this sweltering summer's day.

It is the summer of living separately.